Sensing film with an integrated structure

ABSTRACT

A flexible transparent sensing film with embedded electrodes is described in the present invention, which would greatly improve the optical transmittance, electrical conductivity and reliability. The present sensing film can also simultaneously enable multiple touches for distinct locations sensing and at least another set of electrical signal sensing. The present sensing film includes a top conductive electrode, a bottom conductive electrode and a dielectric substrate or a functional substrate that would generate electrical signal response due to a specific input such as motion, light, chemical, or temperature. The present sensing film apparatus could be configured to have the top and bottom conductive electrodes which are partially or fully embedded onto the surfaces of the dielectric and/or functional substrates.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation-in-part application of the U.S. non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 15/648,444 filed on 12 Jul. 2017; and the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to a sensing film for application in touch panel display and other electronic sensing devices having outstanding optical and electrical properties, and excellent flexibility with embedded conductive network of electrodes into the dielectric or functional substrate.

BACKGROUND

The following references are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety:

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As the advancement of mobile device technology, there are larger demands for touch display screen which are embedded as a replacement of physical keyboard for inputting data. Devices are appealing to large display panel with touch display screen such as mobile phones, portable video game devices and entertainment tablets. There are challenges to develop thinner and sensitive screen to meet the devices development.

In display industry, capacitive touch sensing is one of the most widely adopted technology, due to its high light transmittance and a broad range of temperature tolerance advantages. Typically, a capacitive touch sensing film consists of two transparent conductive electrodes such as ITO coated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or glass. The two layers of transparent conductive electrodes are separated by a dielectric layer using optical clear adhesive (OCA). The bottom PET layer is usually placed on top of an insulating layer made of glass or a PMMA for insulation while a protective layer of hard coating is placed on top of the upper PET layer for protection.

When a finger or an object presses onto the sensing film, a differential change in capacitance is generated. However, the aforesaid mentioned structures are complicated, which would not only induce optical reflection loss at the interfaces when there are mismatches on the refractive index but also raise reliability concerns and increase material costs.

For large touch screen applications, ITO conductors suffer from a drawback of relatively high electrical resistance which hamper their performance, better alternatives are sought to replace ITO and that may modify the design of capacitive sensing film.

It is against this background to exclude the OCA in order to achieve a thinner display screen.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

An object of the invention is to provide novel and advantageous transparent conductive electrode structures for forming the sensing film devices that can be used for touch panel display as well as other potential sensing systems and methods of fabricating the same, which can potentially reduce the overall thickness and greatly simplify the structure of the sensing film.

In this regard, it is provided that a sensing film (capacitive or electrical) comprising a transparent dielectric or functional substrate having a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface, where a first conductive network formed by a plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes is partially or fully embedded into the first surface of the dielectric or functional substrate while a second conductive network formed by a plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes is partially or fully embedded into the second surface of the dielectric or functional substrate;

In some cases, more than one conductive networks are partially or fully embedded into both surface of the dielectric or functional substrate to improve the sensitivity, stability and performance of sensing film. The transparent dielectric substrate may be any kinds of deformable materials such as flexible plastic film and optical clear adhesive, etc. The functional substrate may be any kinds of transparent or non-transparent flexible film that can generate electrical signal under external triggering. Examples include piezoelectric, thermoelectric, lighting sensing, and photovoltaic films, etc. The design of the sensing film in the present invention can provide not only outstanding optical and electrical properties but also an excellent flexibility because the embedded network is firmly integrated into the substrate. Moreover, this design would eliminate or reduce the use of adhesives for the layer bonding, thus significantly reducing the overall thickness and improving the optical transmittance. One of the advantages of this invention is that the thickness of the sensing film would not increase no matter a single- or double-sided conductive network would be used. In addition, the design of this invention allows conductive network at a high aspect ratio embedded into the film, which increases electrical conductivity without reducing the optical transparency. Metallic wires/mesh are currently better alternatives to replace ITO conductors and suitable for simplifying the structure of the sensing film according to the present invention.

Compared to the sensing film using traditional transparent conductive oxide materials, like indium tin oxide (ITO), the design in this invention demonstrates a superior performance in terms of flexibility, optical, electrical and mechanical properties. Moreover, this invention does not require expensive vacuum equipment and can be processed under a relatively low temperature, thus the overall cost is lower.

In one aspect of the present invention, the second conductive network formed by a plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes being partially or fully embedded into the first surface of the dielectric or functional substrate such that the conductive electrodes of the first conductive network can be alternatively displaced from the conductive electrodes of the second conductive network.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Embodiments of the present invention are described in more detail hereinafter with reference to the drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 shows the top view and the side view of a capacitive or electrical sensing film according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIGS. 2A and 2B respectively show different arrangements of the conductive network on the substrate;

FIG. 3 shows the method of fabricating the capacitive or electrical sensing film;

FIG. 4 shows results of bending test on the capacitive or electrical sensing film of different arrangements as in FIGS. 2A and 2B;

FIG. 5 shows results of damp heat test on the capacitive or electrical sensing film of different arrangements as in FIGS. 2A and 2B.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF INVENTION

In the following description, the present thin capacitive or electrical sensing film under different parameters are set forth as preferred examples. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that modifications, including additions and/or substitutions, may be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. Specific details may be omitted so as not to obscure the invention; however, the disclosure is written to enable one skilled in the art to practice the teachings herein without undue experimentation.

According to one embodiment of present invention, a capacitive or electrical sensing film 10 includes a transparent dielectric or functional substrate 100 having a first surface 102 and a second surface 104 opposite to the first surface 102. A first conductive network 120 formed by a plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes is embedded on the first surface 102 of the dielectric or functional substrate, while a second conductive network 140 formed by a plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes is embedded on the second surface of the dielectric or functional substrate. The first conductive network 120 and the second conductive network 140 align at the edge of the dielectric or functional substrate 100 being exposed forming the contact to external. This kind of simple structure of fewer stack-up layers within capacitive or electrical sensing film reduces the optical reflection loss at interfaces which appearance of fringes occurs as a result of mismatched refractive indices.

FIG. 1 illustrates the fundamental structure of such embodiment that two conductive networks of a plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes embedded into both sides of the dielectric or functional substrate. For illustrative purposes, the electrodes of the first conductive network 120 are elongated and arranged in horizontal direction, whereas the electrodes of the second conductive network 140 are elongated and arranged in vertical direction, forming a grid of squares when it is viewed from top as shown, but it should be appreciated that other kinds arrangement may be made, e.g. grid of trapezium or rectangular units. In this configuration, the capacitive or electrical sensing film has higher accuracy with utilization of more than one sensing layer to determine the coordination of a touch. The dielectric or functional substrate can be made of PET, COC, COP, PMMA, PC, PI and PVDF, etc.

In another embodiment of present invention as depicted in FIG. 2A, the first conductive network 220 and the second conductive network 240 are both embedded into the first surface 202 of the transparent dielectric or functional substrate 200 such that the discrete elongated electrically conductive electrodes of the two conductive networks being disposed in a spaced and parallel relationship along the surface. In such configuration, metal trace 260 of the first conductive network 220 overlaps with the metal trace 262 of the second conductive network 240 from a side view which reduce the edge thickness. In contrast, optionally, the first conductive network 220 can be disposed on the first surface 202 and the second conductive network 240 can be disposed on a different surface, e.g., the second surface 204, as in FIG. 2B. The metal traces 260 and 262 of each of the conductive networks tend to overlap each other having a thicker edge.

According to the flowchart shown in FIG. 3, it is provided that the method of producing the capacitive or electrical sensing film comprises the following steps. Firstly, a dielectric or functional substrate 340 is cleaned for preparation. Next, a layer of removable resist layer is prepared over the first carrier substrate 300 where the conductive network patterns are printed on the resist layer by a lithography method (one of photolithography, nanoimprint lithography, e-beam lithography). Followed by the formation of a trench grid network 302 and the conductive substrate being exposed through the trench, the conductive materials are deposited to fill the exposed gaps through the trench and forms the first conductive network 304. The preparation methods may include wet processing approaches, such as electro-chemical process (electroplating, electrodeposition, electroless-deposition), or dry processing approaches, such as sputtering, electronic beam evaporation and thermal evaporation. Electrodeposition is stopped when the first conductive network 304 reaches a preferred thickness and the sample is rinsed to remove the resist layer on the first carrier substrate 300. The aforesaid flow of the formation of a trench grid network 322 is repeated to prepare the second conductive network 324. The first conductive network 304 is sequentially deposited on the first carrier substrate 300 which is placed over the substrate 340 to transfer the first conductive network 304 thereon by pressing the network, where heating on the deformable layer or the conductive network may be required. Finally, the first carrier substrate 300 and the second carrier substrate 320 are removed from substrate 340 and a capacitive or electrical sensing film is formed.

Alternatively, the conductive networks can be formed by electrochemical processes, vacuum deposition process, printing process or other solution deposition processes, depending on the properties of the material used.

Preferably, said dielectric substrate has a dielectric constant between 1.1 to 10, to provide a desired touch sensitivity setting. Sensitivity can be represented in terms of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) while different factories/laboratories have different metric in the calculation of SNR. As a rule of thumb, a higher capacitive change during a touch results in a higher gain and a better SNR. The formula of capacitance is given as follows.

$C = \frac{ɛ_{0} \times ɛ_{r} \times A}{T}$

ε_(r): relative dielectric constant of the overlying panel material

ε₀: capacitance per meter of air, defined as 8.85×10⁻¹² F/m

T: thickness of the panel in meters

A: area of the touched region in m²

Assuming that the thickness of panel and area of the touched region are unchanged in general, it is clear that the relative dielectric constant directly varies the capacitance value. It is also clear that a higher dielectric constant contributes to a higher capacitance thus affecting the sensitivity.

The functional substrate can intrinsically transform the external signal to the electrical signal, such as any change in light, force, pressure, temperature, electricity, magnetic field, etc. With these external triggers, the functional film can produce the electrical signals, which can be collected by the embedded electrodes. The functional substrate can be either transparent or non-transparent film.

The dielectric or functional substrate can be any kinds of deformable materials such as commercially available flexible plastic films, however, a light or thermal curable material is desired to withstand possible heat treatment when transferring the conductive networks onto the substrate.

According to another embodiment of present invention, the discrete electrically conductive electrodes in the first conductive network and the second conductive network are elongated and having a line width of 500 nm-10,000 nm, a line thickness of 0.1 microns-10 microns, and the electrodes having a distance of 1 micron-5,000 microns apart from each other. In some circumstances, both conductive networks interconnect with each other.

The foregoing description of the present invention has been provided for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to the practitioner skilled in the art.

The embodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical application, thereby enabling others skilled in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments and with various modifications that are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the following claims and their equivalence.

EXAMPLES Example 1—Bending Test

FIG. 4 shows the results of a bending test on different configurations of the present sensing film. In this example, COP is used for the dielectric substrate. The test was carried out under the following conditions: bending cycles: 100,000; frequency: 60 cycles/min (1 Hz); bending radius: 20 mm. From the curve shown in FIG. 4, the performance change in terms of sheet resistance (%) over 100,000 cycles at bending radius of 20 mm is minimal. The present film is more flexible while the sheet resistance thereof is substantially unchanged over 100,000 cycles of bending as compared to conventional film, e.g., Sean M. Garner et al., Flexible Glass: Enabling Thin, Lightweight, and Flexible Electronics, 2017. In Garner et al. (2017), it revealed that ITO or other TCO on plastic films would crack during bending after 50 cycles at the bending radius of 20 mm. Other conventional film made of metal nanowires, although it offers a very good flexibility while the sheet resistance is reasonably good after the bending test, has drawback that the sheet resistance is increased significantly when the film is being bended while the sheet resistance thereof is decreased when the film returns to its original state.

Example 2—Damp Heat Test

FIG. 5 shows the results of damp heat test on different configurations of the present film. The test was carried out under the following conditions: testing standard: IEC 60068; chamber condition: 85° C. and 85% humidity; duration: 1,000 hours. From the percentage change in performance in terms of sheet resistance over the testing time of 1,000 hours, there was only less than 5% change in sheet resistance. However, conventional TCO and metal nanowires cannot withstand in such conditions and they either delaminate or corrode. Their electrical resistance would also be increased significantly under such conditions.

Example 3—Thermal Shock Test

The following conditions were used to perform the thermal shock test on different configurations of the present film: temperature setting: +95° C. (high) and −55° C. (low); ramp rate: switching between the high and low temperatures within 10 seconds; soaking time: 1 hour in high and 1 hour in low temperatures for each cycle; number of cycles: total testing duration is 20 cycles (40 hours). Before test, the sheet resistance was 0.587 ohms/sq; after 10 cycles, the sheet resistance became 0.481 ohms/sq; after 20 cycles, the sheet resistance was 0.479 ohms/sq. In terms of the change in sheet resistance, the percentage change is about 18% over 10 cycles and remains more or less the same after 20 cycles of extreme temperature difference. There was no visual defect such as peeling, bubbles, or cracks observed after 20 cycles of the test. The results reveal that the present film can withstand extreme temperature change and is durable. 

The invention claimed is:
 1. A sensing film comprising: a substrate selected from a transparent dielectric substrate or a functional substrate, the transparent dielectric substrate or the functional substrate having a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface; a first conductive network formed by a plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes being embedded into the first or second surface of the transparent dielectric substrate or the functional substrate; a second conductive network formed by a plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes being embedded into the first or second surface of the transparent dielectric substrate or the functional substrate; and the first conductive network and the second conductive network having at least a conductive surface exposed forming the contact to external, wherein the first conductive network interconnects to the second conductive network.
 2. The sensing film according to claim 1, wherein the first and second conductive networks formed by the plurality of discrete electrically conductive electrodes are embedded into the same surface of the transparent dielectric substrate or the functional substrate such that the conductive electrodes of the first and second conductive networks are alternatively displaced from each other.
 3. The sensing film according to claim 1, wherein the sensing film is a capacitive sensing film and said substrate is the transparent dielectric substrate having a dielectric constant between 1.1 to
 10. 4. The sensing film according to claim 3, wherein said transparent dielectric substrate is deformable.
 5. The sensing film according to claim 1, wherein said discrete electrically conductive electrodes in one or both of the first conductive network and/or the second conductive network have a line width of 500 nm-10,000 nm.
 6. The sensing film according to claim 1, wherein said discrete electrically conductive electrodes in one or both of the first conductive network and/or the second conductive network are each 1 micron-5,000 microns apart from each other.
 7. The sensing film according to claim 1, wherein said discrete electrically conductive electrodes in one or both of the first conductive network and/or second conductive network have a line thickness of 0.1 microns-10 microns.
 8. The sensing film according to claim 1, wherein one or both of the first conductive network and the second conductive network is/are protruded above the transparent dielectric substrate or the functional substrate with a protrusion height from 0.1 micron to 10 microns.
 9. The sensing film according to claim 4, wherein said deformable transparent dielectric substrate is a light or thermal curable material.
 10. The sensing film according to claim 1, wherein the first conductive network and the second conductive network are formed by electrochemical processes, vacuum deposition process, printing process or solution deposition process.
 11. The sensing film according to claim 1, wherein the sensing film is an electrical sensing film and said substrate is the functional substrate capable of producing an electrical signal under an external trigger including a change in light, force, pressure, temperature, electricity, or magnetic field.
 12. The sensing film according to claim 11, wherein said functional substrate is a transparent or non-transparent film.
 13. The sensing film according to claim 11, wherein said functional substrate is deformable. 